Monday, 26 September 2011

VENETO (part 2)

North of Venice lies TREVISO, which in the past gave us prog bands such as Capsicum Red, Asgard and Apryl. Today here we can find Faveravola(Official Website), a band formed by some veterans who have been active since the seventies and who in 2007 released the beautiful concept album Contea dei cento castagni.

Interesting contemporary bands from this city are also Aphelion(MySpace), an instrumental project featuring metal influences, and Magnetic Sound Machine(MySpace), highly recommended to jazz-rock lovers. Other bands from Treviso that deserve mentioning are Antilabé(MySpace), Geo’s (MySpace), Epoca (Reverbnation), Lyn (MySpace), Safarà (MySpace), Quarto Vuoto (Facebook) and Synderesi(MySpace). In Treviso there are also the headquarters of the independent label specialized in prog Lizard Records. Then, from the nearby town of Montebelluna comes bass player and composer Alberto Rigoni (MySpace) while from a beautiful place north of Treviso, Cison di Valmarino, comes an interesting melodic prog band called Ephemeris(MySpace). Another town north of Treviso, Vittorio Veneto, is home to an interesting band called The Former Life (Facebook).

Leaving Treviso, still heading north we enter the province of BELLUNO and the amazing alpine area of the Dolomiti, where we can listen to Idea Ostile (MySpace), Crazy Valves (Facebook), Sirgaus (Facebook) and Campo Magnetico (Facebook), born in 2014 from the ashes of a band called John Silver Band(MySpace).

And now back south, to PADUA, the city of Saint Anthony, 40 km west of Venice. Padua is also the birth place of the famous architect Andrea Palladio, whose XVIth century villas in the area of Padua, Venice, Vicenza and Treviso are amongst the most beautiful of Italy, and of Giovanni Battista Belzoni, adventurer, engineer and Egyptologist to whom is dedicated a new concept album by the prog band from Turin Arti e Mestieri, Il grande Belzoni. In the past Padua gave us bands such as Eneide, Mellonta Tauta (Bandcamp),Daphne (Bandcamp) and Audio(Bandcamp) while the contemporary prog scene features bands such as the promising Empirical Time (MySpace), the folk jazz Calicanto(Official Website), the theatrical Lamanaïf (MySpace) and Maieutica (Facebook), the psychedelic Astralia(MySpace), Laatia (MySpace), Hypnoise(MySpace), and Collettivo Androgino (Reverbnation) or the metal influenced Centrica (MySpace) and Twinspirits(MySpace).

In the seventies one of the very few bands linked to the right wing movement, La Compagnia dell’Anello(Official Website), also began life here. The band is still in activity and they’re working on a new album. According to some interviews with the band, it will be a self produced double album in two parts. The first will be heavily prog influenced and will feature a concept inspired by the work of the poet Ezra Pound. The second will feature some new tracks and old unreleased stuff re-arranged. At the moment a new track is available, a piece dedicated to a pilot of the Aeronautica Nazionale Repubblicana, Giovanni Battista Boscutti, who died in 1944 fighting against the Allied forces that were bombarding the city of Padua.

South of Padua lies ROVIGO where we can listen to a good contemporary band called Anfiteatro(MySpace) and to the metal influenced Eloa Vadaath (Reverbnation). Rovigo is also home to composer and multi-instrumentalist Marco RagniFacebook() and here there started an interesting band called A Piedi Nudi. Their guitarist, Nicola Gardinale, has changed musical direction and has formed a blues-rock project called Nic-G And The Mogsy(MySpace).

Leaving Rovigo, we head now back north to VICENZA, which in the past gave us bands such as Abissi Infiniti and Top Left Corner. Now it’s the time of Absenthia(Official Website), an excellent band that combines tradition with heavier sounds and in 2009 released an excellent self produced debut album, Tenebrae Vincunt. Other local bands that in my opinion it is worth mentioning are Malus Antler (Facebook) and the jazz-rock Vertical (MySpace) and Mandela (Facebook). Not far from Vicenza, in a town called Bassano del Grappa, which in the past gave us bands such as Antephonia and Slogans, you can find a very good CD shop, Pick Up Records and listen to an interesting band called Glincolti (Official Website), the jazz-rock Endless Season (Facebook) and to Mad Fellaz (Facebook).

We conclude our visit to Veneto in VERONA, the city of Romeo and Juliet, also known for its landmark ancient Roman amphitheatre, the Verona Arena, which is internationally famous for its large-scale opera performances. You can find here a good contemporary prog scene featuring excellent bands such as the jazz rock D.F.A.(MySpace), Logos (Official Website) and Astrolabio(MySpace), a new band born from the ashes of Elettrosmog(MySpace), a band that in 2007 released an interesting album entitled Monologando.